


From the West to the East

by Cyanokit (Skylark), Skylark



Category: Homestuck
Genre: 5+1 Things, Anime Spoilers, Character Study, Crushes, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Happy Dirkjake, Homestuck Valentine's Exchange, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Sburb, Pre-Slash, Television Watching, Trolling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2017-01-31
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:04:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Cyanokit, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Dirk and Jake watched anime, and one time they didn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Madrugada98](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Madrugada98/gifts).



> This is for participant #11 of the [hsvalentinesexchange](http://hsvalentinesexchange.tumblr.com/). Happy Valentine's Day!
> 
> Yes, I've been [thinking a lot about anime](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1162920) recently. This is two parts because I came down with carpal tunnel and couldn't finish it all at once.
> 
> Title from ["Love Letter to Japan" by The Bird and The Bee](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWYoIoqJURA).

**00.**

GT: So what sorts of hobbies do you have, strider? What idle pursuits tickle your fancy as you while away the hours?  
TT: A lot of things. I build robots and go fishing. Sometimes I watch an anime or two.  
GT: Anime? Those are the japanese cartoons am i right?  
TT: If by “cartoons” you mean “animated postmodernist art style from Japan”, then yes, Jake, I guess we're talking about the same thing.  
GT: I cant say ive ever watched one of those animes but i love all sorts of comics and movies as you well know!!  
TT: The plural of anime is just “anime”. Like how “shuriken” is still “shuriken” when pluralized.  
GT: Whats a shuriken?  
TT: Colloquially, you may know shuriken as “ninja stars”.  
GT: Oh THOSE. Well why didn’t you say so in the first place?? Anywho i do believe were getting off track.  
GT: Do you think you could recommend an anime or two for my perusal? Im sure id enjoy a change of pace from watching all those real people movies.  
TT: Jake, most of the movies you watch are about fictional characters and scenarios.  
TT: But yeah, I can probably come up with something. I’ll have to think long and hard to think of some titles that will suit your highly discerning tastes, though.  
GT: Oh pish posh strider theres no reason to work yourself up over it! Im sure ill enjoy anything the wide world of anime could have to offer.  
TT: I know. I was joking.  
TT: Give me a minute, though.

\--

**01.**

After years of experience, you’ve developed an anime-watching setup that provides the perfect balance of quality and comfort: lying on your bed with your hands behind your head, using your sweet shades to project the video file on the ceiling. You turn the sound up a little to drown out the ever-present roar of the ocean.

It shouldn’t surprise you that Jake has an optimal movie-watching pattern of his own—he’s as voracious as you when it comes to media consumption—but as usual, it’s not what you expected.

“You can’t seriously plan to watch the whole thing upside-down,” you say. 

Jake’s laughter bursts from your desktop speakers. “It’s not upside-down to me,” he replies. “Besides, it’s good for getting the blood going to my noggin. Really helps me think!”

“Somehow I doubt that.”

Jake waves a distracted hand at you from the tiny window he’s occupying in the corner of your screen. “Don’t you fret about me, Strider,” he says breezily, and you frown, because you worry about him all the time. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we? What have you got in store for us today? A daring adventure? A dashing romance?”

“As you might say, I thought we'd start guns blazing,” you say with a smirk. “This is an anime called Black Lagoon, which was released in 2006. It was produced by Madhouse, which is a company you’ll be seeing a lot of if this ends up being a thing we do regularly. The year it came out, it won the—”

“For goodness sakes, Strider, you’ll make me fall asleep with all of that gobbledygook!” Jake shifts, already restless. “Besides, the less I know about it the more exciting it is. Just tell me when to hit play and we’ll get a move on.”

You swallow the rest of your lecture down; it’s not like you spent a while looking stuff up last night, or anything. It’s fine. “If you say so. All right, let’s go.”

The entire opening basically consists of busty women shooting guns. You hear Jake gasp, half-delighted and half-mortified, and give yourself a mental congratulatory pat on the back. _Nailed it._

Black Lagoon is about a hapless businessman named Rock who falls in with a vicious gang of pirates that includes Revy, their booty-shorts-wearing, machine-gun-toting, ass-kicking gunner. Jake doesn’t really stop talking the whole time, mostly varying comments of delight or exasperation, but you’re used to it from your previous movie watching excursions. He moves a lot, too, jostling the camera as he shifts from upside-down to right-side up and eventually ending up on his floor squashed between a pile of guns and an old wooden chest, heels kicking in the air and chin in his hands. His voice forms a soothing additional soundtrack as you watch, grounding you.

“There’s an awful lot of sitting around,” he complains halfway through the first episode.

“Wait for it,” you say. 

True to your word, a few minutes later Jake says, “Did they just _blow their ship into the air?”_

“Yeah,” you say, stoically munching on a dried fish slice.

“So that they could _shoot a helicopter out of the sky?”_

“Seems that way.”

When the episode is over, you can hardly hear the ending theme over Jake's cheers. “Fantastic!" he cries. "Bravo! Shall we continue?”

“Let’s go,” you say, quietly pleased by how easily you’ve fallen into an anime marathon. (Then again, it’s not like the two of you have anything better to do.)

Several hours later, Jake says, “That maid just dropped a dozen grenades from her _dress!_ ” 

“Yeah. Roberta is the best character, no contest.” 

“Well, I do believe Revy gives her a run for her money,” he replies, “but between Roberta and the spectacular dual-wielding and all the explosions, I can hardly believe that I've been missing out on this sort of excitement! That does it!” Jake's practically jumping on his bed, he's so alight with happiness. “Strider, you have converted me! Henceforth I shall declare myself to be an anime fan.”

You swallow down a smile and say, “Anime is awesome, bro. I told you.”

\--

**02.**

You end up having anime afternoons every Thursday. Sometimes they actually start early in the morning, and most of the time they stretch through Thursday into the small hours of Friday morning, but it’s not like you have any reason to note details like that besides your own stubborn sense of pride and determination to pretend at normalcy. You watch anime on Thursdays, is the point.

Almost none of the titles you watch are new to you, but you enjoy seeing them through the lens of Jake’s excitement. He picks up terminology, production companies, and overarching themes quickly, but that’s hardly a surprise to you; you’ve always known that Jake is smart, he just doesn’t apply himself. 

“What are you in the mood for?” you ask him.

“...Promise you won’t laugh,” he says, biting his lip.

Your eyebrow lifts. “What is it?”

“You haven’t promised!”

You shrug. “Sure, I won’t laugh.” He’s still silent though, so you say, “What is it? Do you want to watch hentai or something?”

He responds to the goad instantly, and you relax: “No! Perish the thought, Strider, I know we’re best bros but even that has limits, good heavens. I just thought that, well, if you wouldn’t mind, perhaps we could watch a, er...a shoujo or something.”

Both your eyebrows go up this time. “A shoujo.”

“Don’t laugh,” Jake is quick to warn you.

“I wasn’t going to,” you say, but you’re smirking. “Don’t worry, English, your senpai’s got you covered. What sort of shoujo are you looking for today? A torrid high school romance to get your heart going dokidoki? A mysterious bishounen to—”

“Dirk, you _promised._ ”

Your smile fades at the pain in his voice. “Point taken,” you say. “Sorry. Search for Ouran High School Host Club; that was pretty popular.”

Jake cheers up once the anime starts, laughing at Haruhi’s misadventures and watching the romance scenes with a blush spreading across his cheeks. “Which one do you think she’ll pick?” he asks.

“Whoa, I thought you said no spoilers.”

“I think I’d pick Mori, if I were her,” he continues, oblivious.

“The wild type, huh?” you say mildly. “What about Kyouya?”

“The shadow king? A bit too shady for my liking,” Jake says.

“I don’t know, I could get behind it,” you say, carefully. “It’d be useful for Haruhi to have someone always looking out for her.”

Jake hums, thinking, and you try not to fidget. “Is that who you’d pick, then?”

“No,” you say. “I’d pick Mori.”

Jake laughs. “So you’re a fan of the wild types too, eh?”

“You could say that,” you say, pleased by how disinterested your voice sounds.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has spoilers for Gurren Lagann and Revolutionary Girl Utena, so proceed with caution. 
> 
> Please know that any fun I poke at any anime titles in this fic comes from a place of great love and fondness, and not actual mean-spiritedness.

**03.**

It takes you a while before you work up the courage to show Jake your favorite anime. You realize how silly it is to be worried about _Jake's_ opinion, of all people—he's the textbook definition of "easy to please"—but still.

You tell yourself that there are legitimate reasons you keep putting it off. It's for his own good, really. To truly appreciate it, you want Jake to have a full understanding of everything that came before it—the impact Gainax had on the anime industry before the whole thing went belly-up in 2052, and the hallmarks of that studio's dynamic, off-the-wall style; Gunbuster and Diebuster, from which your favorite title descends; and the mecha sub-genre and its general rules and tropes. So you show him other things, _Kare Kano_ and _G Gundam_ and _Dead Leaves_ , all the while pointing out things you hope he'll remember later, when it matters. He enjoys all of it, laughs at the high-energy style that is Gainax's trademark, develops a taste for fluid animation with vividly saturated colors.

Finally you say, "Your birthday's coming up, isn't it?"

"Yes indeed it is!" he replies. You're using voice-only today because he's on the roof, hunting across its pitted, vine-covered surface for the source of a leak that's sprung up over the past few days, and he wanted company with a minimum of visual distractions. You can hear his boots scraping across the rooftop with a careless quickness that makes you swallow hard, but you don't say anything about it. He wouldn't listen to your warnings, anyway; he never does. "The big one-four," he continues. "And yours is two days after, if I recall correctly!"

"Yeah," you say. "So, um, I checked the calendar and your birthday's on a Thursday this year. So I thought we could celebrate by watching the best anime ever. Well, I mean, it's one of of the best, anyway. There are others that are on par in terms of animation quality, especially later, when newer CG techniques—"

"Yes, yes, I get the gist!" Jake cuts in impatiently. "What's it called?"

"Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann."

"Hmm. That sounds familiar. Ah, found it!" For a moment all you hear are the sounds of clearing and scraping as he fixes the leak. You wait, drumming your fingers on your desk.

"So what you do you think?" you prompt after the sounds of repair have ceased.

"A bang-up job, if I do say so myself!" His voice is brightly breathless. "There was crack in the roof tiling just as I suspected, but I've sealed it as tight as a drum. Oh, wait, you mean about the anime, don't you? Gurren Lagann, you said? Now where have I heard that name before?" 

You can hear scraping as he starts makes his way down from the rooftop. 

"I've probably mentioned it," you say, wanting him to focus on getting both feet on the ground again. "Don't worry about it."

Despite your best intentions he starts to hum with thought, the flat sound eventually turning into a tone-deaf melody of sorts. In the next instant he bursts out "I've got it!!" and you wince at the sudden volume. "That's your favorite anime of all, isn't it?"

You're surprised he remembered. He's more and more forgeful these days, it seems. "Yeah."

"Then it must be spectacular! It'll be like celebrating our birthdays together. Let's do it! What a grand old time we'll have—I can't wait!"

You grin. "Yeah," you say. "You have no idea, this anime is going to blow your mind."

-

A few days later, Jake cries, "He's wearing your _shades_! Is that blue one there your favorite character?"

"Yeah," you say.

Jake quickly latches on to Yoko, which hardly surprises you—but he likes Nia, too. "And Simon," he says, "And—well, everyone! How can you dislike anyone in a cast full of such vim and vigor?"

You realize that Jake is possibly _more_ excited about this anime than you are. To be fair, you've seen it at least a dozen times already, but even the first time you watched it you didn't yell at the screen nearly half as much as he does. The first three episodes have him pumping his fists in the air and cheering; episode eight makes him _weep._

That's...a little awkward. It even makes _you_ tear up, sure, but it's his birthday—he shouldn't be crying like this. Your fingers itch to fix it, but it's not a mechanical problem, and therefore not your area of expertise.

"It gets better," you say, then hate yourself for the platitude. Jake takes a shuddery breath, then wipes his face on his sleeve and looks up.

"Curse those beastmen devils!" he snarls. "I hope Simon cleans their clocks!"

"Yeah," you say. "I mean, yeah, he does. Of course he does."

Silence falls between you as the ending theme plays. Jake's still sniffling at random intervals, his breaths shaky and uneven.

"Hey, Dirk?" he says in a small voice.

"Mm-hmm."

"If you—if you were ever in trouble, I wouldn't let you go out alone like that. I'd save you."

Your pulse spikes. "Yeah?"

 _"Yes,"_ he says, so ferverently that it's almost like he's beside you, not separated by hundreds of years and hundreds of miles. "Why, you're my best friend! I'd do anything for you."

The first few episodes of Gurren Lagann are always a little uncomfortable, watching your blue-haired doppleganger in his stupid anime shades with the inescapable knowledge of how his plotline ends. It makes you wax philosophical, dwell on things you're better off not thinking about. But watching it with Jake, hearing his voice reassure you even though it's choked with tears—it calms you, loosens the lump in your throat.

"You know, you're a few days older than me," you say. "I should start calling you 'aniki.'"

He stares at you incredulously for a moment before bursting into laughter. After a moment, you start to chuckle yourself, and soon you're both laughing way harder than your lame joke called for. Just when you think you've got yourself back under control Jake gasps " _aniki_ " and you start laughing again.

"How about 'oniichan,'" you manage to say.

"No, stop, I can't breathe! You're a riot, Strider, stop!!"

Your stomach hurts and your eyes are full of tears and you love this kid, you love him so much, you'd kill yourself before you let anything happen to him, and you can't tell him a word of it.

\--

**04.**

After all four of you have celebrated your birthdays, the two of you start switching off on who gets to pick what you watch next. He's gotten conversant enough with the anime industry that he starts to do his own research, but you're still glad that you're around to veto him when he wants to watch something particularly fanservice-y or just plain awful. "No, Jake," you say tiredly, "We are not going to watch Seikon no Qwaser."

"Why, there's magic and good old fashioned shounen fights! It sounds like a romp. How would you know if it's any good or not? Have you seen it already?"

You resist the urge to pull off your shades and rub at the bridge of your nose. That would cut off your visual feed of him, and even when Jake is at his most frustrating you want to look at him all the time. "Yes," you grit out, "of course I've watched it, Jake. I watch everything. So please trust me when I tell you that it's really not worth watching. Please. It's not exactly a classic."

Jake scoffs. "Like the last title you picked was a classic either, Dirk, I'd hardly say that Angel Beats is the pinnacle of Japanese animation—"

"Hey, Key's titles are always full of emotional depth and resonance," you snap, "something I guess you wouldn't understand since all you seem to care about sometimes is how many explosions there are—"

"I care more about more than explosions!" Jake retorts. "Why, I'm a very discerning gentleman! I'm no slouch when it comes to popular media myself, Strider, and if something has true technical or artistic merit, I'd like to pride myself on being able to suss it out—"

"Yeah?" you cut in, "You think you can appreciate a classic when you see one? Then prove it."

"Sure, I'll prove it! If it's a fight you want, it's a fight you'll get!" Jake replies. "What do you have in mind?"

"It's only half an hour long but it's held in high regard by basically everyone," you growl as you dig through your library of files. "Absolutely incredible animation, especially for the time period, and Amano was involved in its production. You might know him from his work on the Final Fantasy series—"

"I know who Yoshitaka Amano is," Jake says. "Put the damn anime on and we'll see who has a better respect for the classics!"

"You're on." Then you hit play.

This is how the two of you sit through 20 minutes of Angel's Egg, which is possibly one of the most boring anime ever made. Even you want to give up after the first five minutes. You first watched this ages ago, and then you relegated it to the list of anime you'd only recommend to people you hated; watching it again is sheer torture. Jake is suspiciously silent the whole way through, except for faint noises that you swear are him gritting his teeth.

"A classic," you remind him woodenly.

"Good god," he mutters, "why are there so many _fish?_ "

"It's a metaphor," you say. "I'm surprised you didn't pick up on that, seeing as how you're such a media expert."

"Uh huh," Jake says, apparently too stupefied by sheer boredom to argue with you any further. You get to the scene where the main characters stare unmovingly into a fire for two straight minutes, and don't bother hiding your snort when you see him cover his face with his hands and give a long, frustrated groan.

"Okay, Dirk, I give," he finally begs. "I yield, I'm crying uncle, Dirk, please save me from whatever this is, it's absolutely horrendous. If this is a classic then I'm a dullard who doesn't know a classic from a tin can. You're clearly the man with superior taste here, just please make it _stop._ "

You leave it on for a few more seconds, just to hear him wail in despair again, before you start to laugh and pause the video. As a testament to _just how slow_ Angel's Egg is, unless the pause button had appeared on the screen you don't think either of you would have noticed that the show had stopped. "No, you're right," you say. "Angel's Egg is actually terrible. I don't think anyone actually likes it."

"But it's a classic," he mumbles from behind his hands, and you nod.

"But it's a classic."

"Humans are so maddeningly obtuse sometimes," he says, flopping onto his side on his bed; the force of the gesture makes him bounce a little, causing his hair to fall into his eyes in a way that looks quite charming, not that you'd ever tell him.

"Ain't that the truth," you agree.

"Can we watch something else?"

"Let me guess. You want something with explosions."

"Anyone would want a few explosions after that snoozefest!" he protests. 

"So that's a yes."

"Ugh, yes, Dirk Strider, YES."

"All right," you say with a smile, digging through your files. "Your wish is my command, Jake. Bring on the explosions."

\--

**05.**

The next few weeks go fairly smoothly until the discussion of classics comes up again, in a much less incendiary fashion this time. 

"What else do you like?" Jake says, his voice echoing and a little strange-sounding from the acoustics in his kitchen. He hates going into it; he keeps claiming it's haunted, even though you keep reassuring him that it's scientifically impossible for ghosts to exist. Still, hunger drives men to do great things, and braving a spooky kitchen is one of them.

Dirk doesn't answer for a moment, instead listening to the angry grumble of Jake's automated can opener. He waits until it's finished before he says, "I don't know. I feel like we've watched most of them. Kenshin, Patlabor, No Game No Life—"

Having a discussion about classics is hard for you, because from your place in the future, _everything_ is a classic. But you don't say that; you don't like pointing out how weird and unnatural either of your lives are. 

"Oh come now, Strider, if I know anything about you it's that you're a treasure trove of well-kept secrets," Jake says. His voice sounds excited, the way he does when he's talking about adventure. "Certainly there must be one or two old standbys that you've been hiding away."

"It wouldn't be much of a secret if I told you, though," you say, unable to keep the smile from your voice even as your fingers twist nervously together. "It's important to keep my air of mysterious and aloof charm."

"Do you want me to guess?" Jake says, eyes bright. He loves puzzles almost as much as he loves adventures. "I bet I can guess. Is it Yu Gi Oh—"

 _"No,"_ you interrupt with a wince. "God, Jake, of course it's not fucking Yu Gi Oh. It's not Dragon Ball either, before you try that one."

"I wasn't going to suggest Dragon Ball," Jake sniffs, "I was thinking, you know, Hunter x Hunter."

"Jake, we watched that two months ago," you point out.

"Oh. Huh. I do suppose you're right. You'll have to forgive my daftness! One too many blows to the old noggin, you know—"

 _"Anyway,"_ you say before your worry can wipe out the easy good humor that your banter has established, "it's not anything like that. I guess I could show you one if you really want, if only so you stop insisting that my deepest darkest anime secret is Yu Gi Oh."

"Strider, you do realize that I would support your anime tastes no matter where they ran to," Jake begins stoutly.

"I am not secretly wildly in love with Yu Gi Oh."

"But if you _were—_ "

"Oh my god, Jake, I will show it to you if you promise to never bring Yu Gi Oh up ever again," you groan. "It's a show called Shoujo Kakumei Utena. You might have heard about it if you've done any research into anime. It's a super important title, in some ways as important as Evangelion was, from roughly the same time period, the Be-Papas creative diaspora influenced tons of other titles for decades after Utena was released—"

"Mm-hmm," Jake says, clearly tuning you out. "What's good about it?"

You pause for a second, trying to imagine how to compress the sheer masterpiece of Utena into a simple sound byte. "Well. It has sword fights," you manage.

"Sounds fabulous. Put it on and let's give it a go!" Jake says.

Jake is cheering for Utena by the middle of the first episode and humming along to the opening by the second. "Why, I can see why you'd like this!" he says. "Utena's just the kind of girl everyone would want to be like, right? The upstanding hero, always ready to defend the poor, defenseless rose bride—"

"Wait for it," you can't help but say.

You spend the next few days mowing through Utena at a clip that would be alarming if the two of you had literally anything else to do. Jake gets way more into it than you expected him to, eagerly chatting with you about the importance of the shadow girls' chorus and how Utena uses the mythic structure of the everywhen as a framing device, how the arc of Utena's journey is a variation on the traditional Hero's Narrative. It's some of the most in depth discussions you've ever had, and honestly not what you expected to get out of this when you started watching it with him. 

It's also, well, really gay. The two of you watch Utena and Anthy fall into bed beside one another and reach out to hold each other's hands, and can't help the awkward silence that develops over the skype line.

"I'd like to have power like that," Jake says at last. "The kind of power I could use to protect people."

"Even if it came at a great cost?" you ask, thinking about an imprisoned body in silhouette, the fragmentation brought about by a hailstorm of swords.

"It would be worth it," Jake says slowly, "if it meant that the people I cared about could be happy. I think."

"Yeah," you say. "That's exactly how I feel. If I could protect the ones I love, I'd take any sacrifice."

Jake hums and the two of you fall into silence, watching Anthy and Utena as they watch the stars. 

"I can see why this is a title you keep close to your heart," he says. "Thanks for sharing it with me, Dirk."

You thinking about draping Jake backwards over your arm and feeling his full, trusting weight against you; ripping through pre-determined storylines just to get to him; overcoming fate and fear on the strength of love alone.

"Yeah," you say at last. "I'm glad you like it."

\--

**+1.**

Jake is asleep.

This happens sometimes, when the two of you go a little too hard for a little too long, and Jake sounded like he had a hard week filled with even more horrifying lusii fights than usual. You hear the sound of his slow, rhythmic breathing and glance up. The shine of the screen on his glasses makes it hard to see if his eyes are open, but the soft slackness of his mouth and the way his head has tilted to one side give him away.

"Jake," you whisper. "Jake, do you want to go to bed?"

He doesn't respond. You can't pull your eyes away from the small shape of him in the corner of your screen, obscured by the shadows that flicker across his hunched shoulders. Your fingers ache to pull the glasses from his face and tuck him into bed, but you're kind of far away.

Luckily, you've built an app for that.

A few quick taps on your keyboard and Brobot comes vaulting in through Jake's bedroom window, landing as quietly as cat. It scoops up Jake, who barely stirs, and turns down the covers so it can bundle Jake inside them. It fluffs the pillow under his head and turns off the projector.

"Take his glasses off," you remind it, and Brobot complies. 

You watch it place a cold metal hand on Jake's forehead, smoothing his hair away from his eyes, and feel torn between intense jealousy and intense relief. Brobot is exactly the type of solution you'd find in anime, building a robot just to relay your touch, and you laugh humorlessly.

"Jake," you whisper through Brobot's built in speakers. "I love you."

Jake mumbles something incoherent and snuggles deeper into the pillows. You don't think he heard you, but that doesn't mean you mean it any less.

"Good night," you say, a little louder. "Talk to you tomorrow," and you click the phone call off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who put up with the long wait for the second half! I hope it was as fun to to read as it was for me to write (I had so much fun, my gosh).
> 
> If you want to talk about the anime they watch, or want anime recs, or want to talk about anime in general, just hmu in the comments.


End file.
